The Joint Committee on the Economic Report, in its consideration last winter of the President's Economic Report, was impressed with the importance of continually increasing industrial productivity. The full committee accordingly directed this Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization to study the impact of so-called automation on long-run employment and investment levels (S. Rept. 60, 84th Cong., 1st sess., p. 6). Increasing productivity has provided a self-generating force for economic good in the past. In the interests of economic stability and growth, we must be alert to long-run trends and make sure that it continues that way, with its good features maximized and the result ant personal and short-run hardships, if any, kept at a minimum. The interest which the full committee expressed last winter, and which prompts these hearings, has since grown by the week and month as the newspapers, Sunday supplements, and magazines report eyer new and startling developments in automation. The frequency with which not only the trade magazines but the mass-circulation popular magazines have devoted articles to this subject is striking indication of the public concern as to its economic and social implications. "Blessing" or "curse" seems to be the type of question which these articles seek to answer.

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